Just Because She's Online, It Doesn't Give You the Right to Harass Her

I realize that this is a conversation many people don’t want to have, but for fuck’s sake, can we please stop harassing women online? Yes, we should stop harassing them in person, too, but sweet, merciful Lord, the verbal sewage that many women endure online is stomach churning.

What’s prompting this post, you might ask?

In the past few days, I’ve seen several of the female celebrities, athletes, and various other public figures I follow on various social media platforms post direct messages they’ve received from men who have written them things that go beyond mere harassment. In these cases, “harassment” isn’t a strong enough word.

A more accurate word might be “assault.”

Why?

The messages these “people” send these women include offers to pay them for (often degrading) sexual favors, which they justify by claiming the woman to whom they sent the message should either A) be flattered because of the attention she receives for her physical attractiveness, or B) she should expect such advances because she “dresses like a whore and deserves to be treated as such.”

How many times must we point out how wrong this is?

These unsolicited messages are then continued with deeply pornographic descriptions of what the sender would do, had he his druthers…and massively over-exaggerated genitalia.

Makes you cringe, shudder, clutch your queasy insides, and lose a little faith in humanity just reading it, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider the women receiving these messages didn’t ask for them, no matter what the basement-dwelling wank-ferrets who sent them say.

What’s worse is a few of the women I follow took screenshots of the direct messages they received and posted them to show what kind of harassment they were experiencing — and people clapped back at them in the comments for doing so, posting responses like:

“Ew, why would you post that?”

“That’s not funny.”

“What is wrong with you?”

I’m reading these responses, shaking my head at how badly the people commenting missed the point.

The person posting these messages is sharing the unwanted harassment they received, most likely in an attempt to draw attention to the problem, if not expose the person who is filling their inbox with raw human sewage.

This is a problem that needs to be addressed (hence this post).

These toaster-humping fuck-wits simply type these messages, I’m guessing with one hand, and fire them off without giving a single thought to the harm they’re causing.

Moreover, I would speculate that these shit-sucking turd-farmers feel emboldened when they harass women online because they don’t see the harm they cause (also one of the reasons cyber-bullying is such a prevalent problem).

Think about any instance in which you said something mean or hurtful to someone’s face. You can see their reaction. You can see them get angry. Or sad. Or do their best to brush off your comment. Furthermore, you run the risk of others hearing and/or seeing you upset another person — others who may intervene on behalf of the injured party, or who may attempt to mediate or resolve the conflict.

Or at least look at you like the asshole you’re currently behaving like.

Also, when you say hurtful things to someone’s face, you run the risk of eating their knuckles.

The point is, you see the harm you cause. And unless you’re a complete sociopath, that person’s reaction registers with you. Even if you’re pissed off and your intent was to be hurtful, you see in real time whether or not you succeeded in causing harm.

In online environments, these soggy toilet-weasels can hide behind a screenname, online persona, or worse, internet anonymity. They don’t see the person’s reaction when they read something like, “I’d drop about 5,000 babies in you.” Yes, that’s an actual comment one of the stand-up comedians I follow received from a “fan.” It’s G-Rated compared to some of the other comments which offer a festival of various bodily secretions…shall we say “creatively applied” to the intended recipient.

If you just thought, “Oh, gross!” you’re right to do so.

This should come as no surprise, but a woman doesn’t have to be famous or even have a modest social media following to receive such unwanted harassment from these barely sentient piles of partially digested platypus vomit.

I mentioned to my sister that I was writing about this topic, and she replied, “Oh, yeah, that happens to me about once a month.”

More than the notion of my little sister being harassed by some prolapsed anus with wi-fi, what shocked me was the nonchalant manner in which she said it. Her tone and body language was the same as if she was telling me what she had for lunch that day.

The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. I began to think about female friends of mine enduring this kind of harassment.

And students I’ve taught putting up with this shit.

And the girls on the high school track team I’ve coached — some of whom are as young as 14 years old — being harassed, being exposed to things that most adults want nothing to do with.

And it made me sick to my stomach. That’s not a figure of speech; I actually got nauseas…and angry…and worried.

What worries me is, at some point in their lives, someone gave these festering warts on a troll’s wrinkled ass the impression that this sort of harassment of women was acceptable. Either no one bothered to point out that sending these kinds of unwanted, sexually explicit messages is wrong, or, worse, someone showed them it was ok by doing it themselves, possibly while having a laugh.

What worries me more is, men who harass women online with impunity are more likely to do so in person. And if they are willing to harass women in person, and are not met with stern enough reproach, they may grow even bolder and actually attempt to, and God forbid, succeed in physically assaulting women.

It’s a slippery slope.

Don’t believe me?

There’s an actual psychological process a person undergoes before someone commits this kind of assault, as outlined by the Mandated Reporter Training I complete yearly (it’s an annual requirement because I’m a teacher and coach).

The four steps are: Conception, Overcoming Internal Barriers, Overcoming External Barriers, and Opportunity.

The Conception stage is simply the idea occurring to someone. Something as stupid as “Hey, I should send this woman an unsolicited dick pic.”

Realistically, we all have fucked up thoughts from time to time. This isn’t limited to forms of assault. This can be any wild, impulsive thought of passing curiosity. Something like, “If I jumped off the top of this building, would I survive?” falls into this category.

Luckily, most of these ideas die as soon as we concoct them, because things like reason and rationality kick in and say things like, “Dude…you’re an idiot. Knock that shit off right now.”

And most of us knock that shit right off.

However, some people don’t. They progress to the next stage: Overcoming Internal Barriers.

That crap-tacular idea of shooting off an unsolicited dick pic gets past the brain’s internal firewall, causing the person to be ok with sending said dick pic as long as there are no repercussions for doing so.

For most people, the fear of consequences is enough to kill that terrible idea; consequences being a big part of External Barriers. These are things like laws, societal expectations, pressures, or norms, or the fear of someone’s adverse reaction.

Again, this barrier is mostly effective at filtering out horrible ideas like DM-ing someone and offering to pay them for sex (which is putting it very lightly) simply because they’re female. Also, external barriers are effective because, if you suggested a woman prostitute herself in person, she may slug you right in the mush…and she’d be justified in doing so. And if you persist in your assault, the cops will be called and charges will be filed.

So, a person who gets the idea to assault a woman, that idea having occurred to them, having gotten past their internal barriers, and is looking to circumvent the external barriers that failed to dissuade them, they will progress to the last stage: Opportunity.

Sometimes this can be a spur of the moment thing — a crime of opportunity, if you will. Or, and this is waaaaay more creepy, something premeditated. And I’m not saying people who commit assault are all sociopaths, but I imagine they have some degree of distortion of right and wrong.

The internet, however, turns even the mildest distortions into a cavalcade of fun house mirrors. The internet allows shitty ideas like harassing women online to bypass many of the internal and external barriers we have and creates a platform filled with opportunities to carry out whatever verbal assault these bottom-feeding dung-dwellers can come up with.

Moving forward, let’s make a pact.

We’re not going to stand for this anymore.

Obviously, we don’t want to be perpetrators of spreading this digital fecal matter. Being passive observers isn’t enough. If you see this type of harassment, say something. Let that person know what they’re doing isn’t ok. Maybe reposting their filth and making public what they wanted to keep private isn’t an option for you, which is understandable given how graphic some of this harassment can be. However, maybe messaging them and telling them to stop, to consider what they’re doing, to think about the harm they’re causing is a viable solution.

Let’s stand with someone when she shows what kind of harassment she’s dealing rather than berating her for posting that harassment.

If enough of us take a stand, maybe things will change.

If we do nothing, they won’t. Maybe they’ll get worse.

I’m not saying it’s easy. But exposing the problem and the people perpetrating is a step towards a solution.

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